from Part III - Applied Complexity Economics for Environmental Governance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 November 2022
This chapter explores technology dynamics, and policies to influence the direction of technological change, for addressing climate change. `Optimal’ policy to address climate change has been the topic of substantial debate. In the standard environmental economics framework, one pricing policy should be used per market failure, and that policy is expected to exactly fix the externality and solve the problem. For climate change, this is a carbon price. Socio-technical systems are, however never in equilibrium, but rather are in constant change. Here, insights from Chapters 7 to 8 are brought together to formulate a dynamic model of co-evolutionary technology diffusion and learning. The model is used to analyse policy design in key sectors that matter for climate change. Synergies and interference effects exist between different types of policy approaches, and this indicates that for technological change policy, welfare economics is a poor framework to design technology policy, as optimality is ambiguous. Instead, simulations can help identify smart and effective policy strategies that accelerate technological change in desired directions.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.